posted on Jun, 23 2016 @ 11:56 AM
Recently I was asked what I meant, after I posted in a thread. At first I was just going to answer the question, but I realized a certain
synchronicity at play. Last night my Advocate said to me that she liked to listen when I talked to the patients, because I always speak in parables.
Last Monday my mother said that even when I was a child, I had to have a reason for everything. She said every request came with a discussion about
the why, the reason, for the command. She said I would sometimes make her and my father so frustrated that they would reply with those five words that
she hated when she was a child, "Because-I-Told-You-So!" On Friday, when I was talking with my best friend, she made the comment, that when she
talks to me she has to put her thinking cap on, because she knows I am going to ask a thousand questions, that no one else would ever think of asking.
I do have a problem when things don't make sense to me, so I am forever asking the question, "why?" I do have a need to know the reason behind
everything. I have learned from childhood that very few things on this magnetospherically, vacuumed packed, planet of ours, is in isolation. Almost
everything is connected to something else and the destruction of something, is eminent, when we ignore that basic fact.
We go along in this world thinking that we have rights, and we should be able to do whatever we choose, whenever we choose. We think the excuse that
we are not hurting anyone, makes our actions permissible. But we never look beyond the superficial. We don't ask the "4 Ws"; the What, When, Where,
and Whys. The basics of life and survival.
Many are starting to see the handwriting on the wall, but are still allowing themselves to be distracted. There are so many pieces of the puzzle
scattered about that I don't believe any one person has enough pieces to see the whole picture. We have enough good minds here at ATS that we have an
excellent chance at putting the puzzles together, but we have lost the ability to work together as a team. I suggested a long time ago that we work
together to see if there was a connection between all our puzzle pieces, that we try to see the whole picture, and try to decipher the true tapestry
being woven. That suggestion went nowhere fast. I learned that people no longer listen to what you are try to convey. They are only listening for the
gap, so they can slide in what they want to say.
I have learned that in conversation, most people want to expostulate, or they want to denigrate, or they want to be entertained. When instructing and
educating my patients, I use a mild form of entertainment. I use words, circumstances, situations, and anecdotes that they don't just understand, but
can absorb.
The fastest way to lose a patient's attention, and interest, in the material I need to share with them, is to hand them a list of instructions, and
tell them what they should be doing. I usually start with something that appears completely foreign to the subject matter. This immediately places
them in questioning mode, even if they don't say anything out loud, it is written all over their faces. Once I have them in questioning mode, then
they are ready to absorb new information. My next step is to present the material in a way that is personal to the patient, and in a way that they can
viscerally relate to the information. Once I have them interested, I give them the opportunity to see how much they already know. For most people
quickly come to realize, the information is something they already knew, or had heard before. It was just something they ignored because they felt it
did not affect them directly or personally.
Much of what we discuss here on ATS is not new. Sometimes is has been rehashed so many times that it no longer has form or substance. Most people
don't come to learn, they come to teach or to fight. The problem is that as a teacher, if you don't listen and learn, what your students know, you
will fail as a teacher.
So when I say that we have to start asking the right questions, I mean that you need to stop accepting the gilding and stop believing that what you
hold in your hand is the gold ring. Stop looking at what is on the surface and look at what is under your feet. Your questions may be different from
my questions, but we each know when something just doesn't make sense to us, turning a blind eye, and a deaf ear to the problem, is not going to make
it go away, and it is not going to fix it. There is no Cavalry coming over the horizon. There is no knight in shinning armour coming to the rescue.
We all agree that we live in a global world, yet we can't see beyond the electronic devices we have sitting in our laps, and holding in our hands. We
can look at the things we desire and covet, and we can see ourselves in that moment, yet we are blind and deaf to the pain, the hunger, the thirst,
that we see in the faces of those that we think we could never be. Be very careful of the deception, because reality paints a much different picture.
We have the right, and we should use it to ask questions, and we should demand answers.